People currently use a variety of devices that are connected to the Internet, such as computers, sensors, phones, and actuators. Some estimates project the proliferation of over 50 billion such Internet-connected devices deployed by the year 2020. These devices are starting to pervade homes, workplaces, vehicles, and public spaces. They watch people, listen to people, and feel people. Moreover, they infer context and action, anticipate and mediate interactions between persons and their world, and in some cases allow people to be more effective humans.
Many of these devices and their associated technologies are developed independently of one another and use proprietary techniques. Each device is built without thought that the device may become part of a larger, collaborative system. These devices, for the most part, do not communicate with each other in a way that allows them to combine their capabilities with the capabilities of other devices. Moreover, these devices can be difficult to deploy and configure. This means that many of the multitudes of devices that are commonly used each day are unable to communicate and interact with each other. Many of these devices use stand-alone point-solutions of dumb sensing and actuation systems, each of which is specialized to do a very small set of isolated tasks. It is highly desirable for these devices to easily interoperate while at the same time being durable and power efficient.